A peaceful forest scene featuring tall trees with moss-covered trunks and branches. Serene sunlight filters through the canopy, illuminating ferns and other greenery at the forest floor.

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Safety from the inside out.

Close-up view of green fern fronds in the early stages of unfurling, with some curled and some partially opened, set against a dark, blurred background.

What is IFS?

Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) is a compassionate, non-pathologizing type of psychotherapy that treats the whole person. Also known as “parts-work,” IFS helps people understand and gently shift deeply entrenched patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that originated from adverse life events.

IFS is a deep, experiential form of therapy that creates significant, long-lasting transformation and is especially effective for resolving the aftereffects of trauma. Unlike other forms of trauma treatment, IFS doesn’t require reliving an event to achieve relief, making it a gentle and accessible therapy that honors the client’s sense of personal power and control.

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IFS can help:

  • Enhance feelings of safety and security in relationships with others and with yourself

  • Remove barriers to personal, professional, and creative goals

  • Alleviate internalized perfectionism, self-criticism, and shame

  • Address sources of anxiety, PTSD, and depression

  • Increase internal clarity, self-worth, self-confidence, and self-trust

  • Build new patterns that feel calmer, kinder, and more sustainable

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Allison Davis, LCSW-C, sitting in her therapy office in Frederick, MD on a light-colored sofa in a living room, smiling, with her hand on her chin, with a patterned rug underneath and a small potted plant on the left.

How does IFS work?

The IFS model explores the mind as a multi-faceted system of parts that contributes to overall patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Many of these parts developed to help us survive, get our needs met, and maintain our relationships when our life situations were less than optimal. As we age and evolve, we’re more able to meet our own needs, explore new forms of healthy relationships, and survive in different ways, but many of that old programming never got an upgrade.

You can think of it like a cellphone where the primary operating system (you) changes and evolves over time but that many of the apps (parts) never updated and are still running on old scripts.

In IFS, we get to know each of these parts, update them, and relieve them of old burdens. As a result, we feel like we are living from our true, authentic sense of self, rather than our reactions.

Want to learn more?

Let’s talk and see if IFS might be a good fit. Reach out today to schedule a consultation call.

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